Sacrifice, Sport, and Street Art in 'Le Maroc Utile': Performing and Negotiating 'The Modern' in Morocco and Beyond

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This research project examines the political economy of modernity in Morocco with attention to how modernity narratives are employed to justify or change social/cultural practices. Focused on the region known in the local vernacular as 'le Maroc utile' ['the useful Morocco'], the project explores conceptions of this largely emic (though, as the name indicates, not uncontroversial) category of place and attends to performances and negotiations of 'the modern' in spheres of activity that figure largely in the lives of those who live there. The spheres of activity-based on extensive pre-fieldwork in country-include: 1) sacrifice; 2) sport; and 3) street art, and are explored through anthropological methods, including long-term fieldwork and additional practice-based methods. In greater detail, the research focuses on the performance and negotiation of what is coded as modern within and among the following spheres of activity: 1) sacrifice (particularly the Eid al-Kabir Feast of Sacrifice as a key locus of claims to what is modern and the practice of which is changing significantly as well as minimally documented in the Moroccan context); 2) sport (lay sports as well as activities of the Casablanca football ultra fans, both of which involve performance, bodies in motion, and serve as key spaces where identities and imagined futures 'play out'); and 3) street art (as a particularly salient and ubiquitous 'background' performance that provides additional discourse on modernity, sport, religion, gender, health, and environment, among other themes). The project also pays attention to the ways in which what is coded as modern and valued (or valued negatively) is further negotiated within a home whose family members participate in these spheres of activity and live in the midst of these performances. Through the scope of these inter-related spheres of activity, the project examines the ways modernity is understood and performed in a particular place where people use the concept 'modern' in unique ways, and where what is considered modern is under negotiation and, crucially, in dialogue with global discourse on modernity, modernization, and development. By co-practicing with my interlocutors, activities they designate as important in exploring, navigating, and sometimes contesting Moroccan modernity or modernities, and by engaging with these performances and their publics, the aim is to understand their influence and the greater negotiation of Moroccan modernity in the 21st century. A second aim of the research is to apply findings from 'the Moroccan case' to discussions of modernity and modernization that have gained traction globally and that speak to some of the key challenges of our time, including those that address the Anthropocene and speaking for others.